In the summer of 2006, I started keeping a weekly journal at the tender age of 11. I’d talked about wanting to do so for a while, but my family’s road trip in June of that year finally gave me something significant enough to write about. In a month’s time, I rode out west to Yellowstone, drove through the Badlands, and visited Mt. Rushmore and Niagara Falls.

For the first time in my adolescent life, I was inspire to write about my life. Granted, what I wrote about after the trip wasn’t nearly as exciting or inspired as the wonderment of a 6th grader seeing a golden eagle for the first time, but at least I was still writing. I was finding new ways to describe what I saw and to tell it in an engaging way—at least, engaging for 11 years old.

I look back at the scraps of writing that I’ve saved from then and I have to laugh at times, honestly. I was in such a rush to sound older and more capable than I was, an unknown precursor to writing professional resumés. I’m sometimes all too ready to completely condemn my writing abilities at that time. It’s easy, too, especially when you realize that those written works from when you were younger that you were so proud of and thought were so quality are usually not so at all. Oh, you might recognize a brief glimpse of true inspiration here and there, but mostly, the general reaction to looking back at old work is a begrudging cringe. God knows that I have in looking back at the journals of 11-year-old me.

We never like to think that we were bad at something at some point, and for some reason, writers/artists/creators in general are the worst at accepting that fact—even though the basic fact that we used to be worse at something and are now better at it to some degree should be an encouragement to us. I really don’t prefer to use Adventure Time for life advice, but it really does work here.

Another excellent way I’ve heard this phrased is: "Perfect people can’t change.”

Sounds like a bit of a “duh” statement at first, right? But it’s deeper than it seems if you think about it a little. What would be so great about being perfect at something, really? Ok, great. You’re perfect at doing any one thing. Congratulations. You’re the best there is. You can literally do no wrong.

Can I be candid? That sounds simultaneously boring and terrifying. What’s the point if you can’t improve? Where’s the drive and the motivation if you don’t have a goal to work towards, a new level to reach? I guess it depends what you consider to be worse—the futility of chasing new goal after new goal of improvement or the stagnancy of reaching the top with no place to go from there.

At any rate, having a point of reference to see how you’ve improved in certain areas can really help restore your faith and esteem for your personal growth. In my own experience, I’ve been able to achieve that through writing regularly. It started when I was in middle school by keeping a personal journal, and it has evolved into these articles that I write weekly. I can’t say what you will find in your own life that will give you that same perspective, but I trust that you can and will know yourself well enough to find out. Just remember how true it is that perfect people can’t change, and so it is entirely ok that we are not perfect. We are constantly improving, all the time. So chin up, and keep moving forward.